The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, Part II

Elizabeth Gaskell's sudden death in November 1865, at the height of her career, prompted the Athenaeum to lament the passing of 'if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists' (18 November 1865). Few of Gaskell's contemporaries were willing to consign her exclusively to the ranks of 'lady novelists', and late Victorian memoirists and critics measured her achievements against those of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. Gaskell's literary output was prolific and varied. As well as five major novels.